Oracle details object upgrade

REDWOOD SHORES, California--Oracle(ORCL) today finally gave details of object support planned for its Oracle 8 database upgrade, set to ship later this month.

The company has been talking about Oracle 8, which executives describe as the cornerstone of Oracle's software architecture, since 1992. But
few details of the database's object support, first described five years ago
by Oracle chief Larry Ellison, have emerged until today.

The database is a central part of the company's architecture, called the
Network Computer Architecture (NCA) for deploying network-based
applications. Company officials liken the product's strategic significance
to the importance of Windows 95 for Microsoft.

"Oracle 8 is our Windows 95," said Oracle president Ray Lane. "It's what Windows 95 is to Microsoft. Oracle 8 is the centerpiece of our architecture."

The object support will be an evolutionary technology that will
allow corporate developers to incrementally add support for images, video, and text to new and existing applications, the company said.

Oracle intends to make object database technology mainstream through the
added support in Oracle 8. Still, core relational technology isn't going
away, said company officials. "Ten years from now, relational databases
will still be a very large part of the market," said Jerry Held, senior
vice president of server technologies at Oracle.

The database, to be officially unveiled on June 24, will offer
out-of-the-box support for text, video, spatial, numeric, character, and
date data types, and for two new data types, image and time series. In
addition, Oracle 8 will allow third-party and corporate developers to add
additional custom-defined data type support via a feature called
extensibility.

Extensibility allows developers to use an Oracle-supplied
software development kit, due in the second half of this year, to build
data cartridges for specialized data support.

The extensibility feature, Java support, and support for JSQL
(Java Structured Query Language), a Java-friendly data query language, will
be delivered in Oracle 8.1, Held said. The point release is due later this year, he said.

The release's object support will put additional pressure on a handful of
already marginalized specialty object database vendors, such as Object Design and Versant. "I think they will find
themselves under considerable pressure," said Mitch Kramer, an analyst with the Patricia Seybold Group.

No pricing for Oracle 8 has been announced. The database is expected to
ship later this month on Windows NT and Solaris, with additional platform
support expected to debut later this year.